the automaker built 418,831 electric vehicles, a 14.4 percent decrease on Q2 2023.
After several boom years, even the hype-generating powers of Tesla CEO Elon Musk weren’t able to stave off the realities of a small and stagnant product line and a brutal price war, particularly in China.
OK sales down and production down.
Musk can do nothing about the EV price war. But he could introduce new models and/or skins to existing models. Neither of which has much interest to Musk. But couldn’t that be delegated to an high level employee?
In the past “the look” of a vehicle had a high influence on sales. I doubt that has changed.
There is a proliferation of new EV models for the 2024-2025 model years.
They still had more sales of EV than BYD and they also beat consensus by about 8 thousand cars. Tesla is trading up about 9 percent right now in the market.
BYD sold 426,039 EVs in the April-June quarter, according to Reuters’ calculations based on its monthly sales reports. That is almost 18,000 vehicles fewer than Tesla’s vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, but far closer than the more than 86,000 gap in the prior quarter.
Tesla sales are still declining for EVs produced in China factory.
There must be a disconnect somewhere… Just yesterday there was an article on Seeking Alpha suggesting shorting the stock. Maybe the shorts are getting the stuffing squeezed out of them.
Reality is that EVs are Tesla’s yesterday’s story. The company is pivoting to monetizing AI via FSD, RoboTaxis, and the Optimus robots.That’s the disconnect most people don’t see. Not that EVs are not important, they are providing the cash flow to make the transition possible, a very costly transition requiring data centers bigger than most can imagine consuming electricity like there is no tomorrow.
Not just data centers, the AI requires inference computers on all the hardware, on EVs, on RoboTaxis, and on Robots. All use the same inference computer which will number in the millions. The current version is hardware 4 (HW4). Tesla is working on HW5 already. BTW, they use ARM technology.
And people still think Tesla is just a car company. Tesla might be one of the most misunderstood enterprises in history.
Isn’t that a bit of whistling past the graveyard though? Most manufacturers had double digit increases of EV sales.
Part of the explanation could be that most manufacturers sell way fewer EVs than Tesla, so it is easier to grow fast. I’ll buy that. But the fact Tesla can’t grow at all seems to be indicative of a problem. For years, the narrative was that Tesla was so far ahead in the EV race that manufacturers would never be able to catch up. But now they are catching up.
Some Chinese consumers would claim Tesla has been surpassed. Perhaps is considered even old and staid.
Hot competition in China’s electric car market is pushing local automakers to sell vehicles with fancy tech that Tesla doesn’t yet offer in the country — and sometimes at lower prices.
No longer are companies competing primarily on driving range. Instead, as they reveal new models at a rapid pace, they’re piling on a slew of features: in-car projectors, refrigerators and driver-assist, to name a few.
Tesla’s cars don’t come with those accessories, and Elon Musk’s automaker only offers a limited version of its driver-assist tech in China right now.
“In China, I think it’s more entertain[ment], more gadgets, people really want to buy something with the most advanced tech specs,” he said, adding that in Europe, people focus more on functionality.
The Chinese consumer desire a vehicle with all the new hi tech features.
That is certainly different from what I look for in a vehicle. I like old, staid and reliable. I like vehicles without fancy electronic gizmos that will break and will requirement expensive repair.
